


a hard row to hoe

by chininja



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Family Feels, Gen, Identity Issues, POV Neville Longbottom, basically Neville navigating life and growing up without his parents' guidance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-25
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2019-06-16 03:01:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15427572
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chininja/pseuds/chininja
Summary: “It’s strange, isn’t it? To not know one’s parents.” Her voice starts him from his musing, and Neville turns to face her with a conflicted look on his face. “You still have your dad though.” He whispers, eyes seemingly magnetized to the young faces waving at him in the photo. “And at least some semblance of a closure.” He doesn’t want to sound ungrateful that Nan took care of him all these years, or to discount the tragedy of losing her mother right in front of her. But Neville feels that no one really understands how much he feels like he’s stuck in a limbo. Because he’s not really an orphan, is he? And he doesn’t quite have parents either.Or a story of how Neville Longbottom struggles, and eventually comes to terms, with the unique situation of having one's parents institutionalized.





	a hard row to hoe

**Author's Note:**

> I had always had this idea of exploring minor characters and trying to tell the story in their perspective. Neville's story was a good channel for me to do just that. I hope you enjoy reading his story as much as it was a joy for me to tell it.

_2_

Unlike most children, Neville’s first words weren’t _mama_ or _dada_. In fact, he didn’t say _Nana_ (his finger pointing at his grandmother, an adorable tilt of his head to accompany it) until he was nearly two years old. Augusta Longbottom worried her grandson was mute. Neville was such a quiet child that she had such an easy time taking care of him. He didn’t cry much as an infant, which was both a blessing and a challenge.

Augusta had to really get her nose close to his diaper because even with soiled pants, Neville simply _took it in._

But he was a friendly child, gave everyone he encountered a grin with more gums than teeth, and a delighted squeal to those who would offer to carry him. So it was only a matter of time before Neville observed the children from the neighboring houses cry out to their mothers after play time. They were out in the garden. It was a lovely day, Augusta thought, and she laid out a blanket on the ground with some of Neville’s toys to keep him occupied.

“Just a little bit longer, mum! Please?” a boy of 6 asks his mother as he brushes his sweaty blond fringe with the back of his hand.

“You still have your lessons, young man. And you need to change, you’re filthy!” the mother reprimands, but there is a slight twitching of her lips.

The little boy sighed in dismay, brushed his little hands on his muddied trousers, and followed his mother inside the house.

Augusta looks to Neville just then, his confusion evident in his features before he turns to see another mother holding her daughter’s hand as they strolled down the street. A shift of his head and he sees a young father carrying his son in one arm and chatting animatedly with another neighbor.

Before she can tell him to stay on the blanket, Neville clambers on his knees. He crawls towards their fence, and uses it to support him as he stands and cranes his little neck to see more of the families out on the street.  When her grandson turns to look back at her, his brows are furrowed.

He raises his soft baby fingers in her direction.

“Mama?”

Augusta Longbottom feels her heart break for her boy. She slowly moves towards where Neville stood, his curious eyes back on the family from across them. She brushes his hair from his forehead a lays a kiss on it. “No my darling, but I love you just as much as your mummy does.” She carries him easily in one arm, leaning her head on the side of his face before placing a kiss on his chubby cheeks.

 _I’ll love you as fiercely as they protected you_.

 

_7_

It wasn’t his first visit to his parents, his Nan having taken him when he was four. But it was the first time that he started to have an idea what it meant for him that his parents are institutionalized. Sometimes when they visit, Neville swears that he sees a spark of recognition in their faces; his mother’s eyes aren’t just dull orbs staring back at him. He clings to that desperate hope more so today. He starts to race towards the ward his parents are kept once he and Nan stepped out of the fireplace. A boy of seven now, Neville vaguely hears his grandmother’s reprimands of, “ _Walk Neville! Merlin!”_ But that doesn’t stop him from running towards their room.

Once inside, Neville walks slowly towards the space in between their beds. He removes the drying flowers from the vase and replaces them with the ones he picked from Nan’s garden. There is a smile on his mother’s face, a warmth that entices him to burrow himself into her embrace. But Neville’s learned that Alice in this state doesn’t like being touched. He remembers the sympathetic look the healer gave him when he was five and his mother screamed when he touched her. _Best to let her initiate contact, dear_.

So a young boy of seven holds himself back from hugging his mother because she doesn’t know him.

“Hello, would you like some chocolate?” Alice asks so earnestly that Neville acquiesces even if he isn’t overly fond of them.

“Mum,” he begins, his pitch high as that of young children, but quivering. Alice is humming a tune now, oblivious to the plight of a child she doesn’t recognize. “They called me a squib.” Neville overheard his relatives talk about him to Nan one time. It left him confused because he has done some magic. (He remembers the time one of Nan’s gardenias were wilting and, with a quiet desperation, _willed_ it to bloom again.) “And I know I’m not, I’ve made things happen.” He scrunches his face in frustration, because how do you prove you’re right when your family is so convinced that you are _lacking_?

“I wish they’d stop with the looks though,“ he continues. “Those hurt more than their words.” Neville supposes that he can accept that his parents will be incapable of being proud of him. But his relatives doubting his identity as a wizard just seems to add salt to a very real, very open wound.

He sniffles a bit, feels his eyes start to water a little. But Neville rubs his fists in his eyes before the tears fall. He doesn’t want to upset his parents, after all – even if they won’t really  understand it.

“Hello, would you like to play a game of cards?” His dad turns to join in on them; not the actual conversation but recognizes that something is happening in the other bed.

Neville sighs. While he longs for the catharsis of being able to lay everything before his parents, he knows it’ll never be enough if they weren’t lucid. So he tucks his upset feelings into a place where he can deal with them quietly at his own time. For now, it seems he has a card game to play with his parents.

 

_10_

When Augusta explained to him what had happened to Frank and Alice – truly and specifically – Neville was distraught. He knew of course earlier on that some bad people had hurt his parents beyond magical intervention. She had told him that when they first went to see them in St. Mungo’s. It was enough to satisfy his curiosity until he was eight. But Augusta decided that Neville simply cannot go to Hogwarts without fully understanding what had happened to his parents.

He was out tending to the neighbor’s garden when she called him in for afternoon tea. (Augusta saw Neville’s proclivity for horticulture and decided to exploit his talents in the hopes that it would draw him out of his shell and actually make friends. Even if friends meant kindly old ladies.) Neville dusts his hands on his trousers, lets Mrs. Cullen know he’s being called off for tea, and crosses the street to their house.

Augusta thought that being direct was the best route to take; give him the facts, and let him come to her should he have any questions. Many have told her that she had quite the sharp tongue, had a very direct, no-nonsense approach to things. She’s always been a little proud about it, thinking it a quality in communication that most should emulate. She had never considered it to be a character flaw until she sits back against her chaise and realized that the way she spoke of Frank and Alice had catered to her preferences rather than to Neville’s sensibilities.

She kept herself from going on the defensive and from reprimanding him when she saw his lips start to tremble with barely concealed grief. Instead, she sits by his side on the couch and frames his face with her hands – soft, warm, wrinkled by time and history.

“You must be proud of them Neville.” Augusta says to him; her grey eyes sharp, her voice even more so. “They did what was honorable and brave.” His tears have spilled and Neville moves to wipe them with his hands, but she sweeps them off with her thumbs.

“May I be excused please?” She could hear the break in his voice. _My brave boy_ , Augusta thought. She could so clearly see that despite the information that was just unloaded on him, he was still trying to keep his composure. Augusta lets him leave and shuffle back into his room.

She tries to pretend that she doesn’t hear his sobs when she passes by his room to call him down for supper. But the tightness that she feels in her chest after is not so easily ignored.

 

_14_

The first Defense class with Moody brought Neville immediately back to that time four years ago when Nan told him of the Lestranges. He thought he would recoil from the sight of those spiders being tortured, but he was strangely transfixed. Almost like he was under the Imperius. It was a vicarious experience, that.

When Moody finally stopped (and Neville will think to remember to give Hermione his thanks after class), it was like being snapped out of hypnosis. He couldn't remember what happened before a helpless creature was placed under the curse. Neville shuddered to think of how out of control his parents must've felt to be placed under the Cruciatus for as long as they were. How any person who have experienced it would feel every bit subjugated to the malice of the caster.

It was inhumane, and it made him angry to think that someone some hundreds of years ago thought it prudent to come up with it. He was always going to be sad about the predicament his parents are in because of the Lestranges, that wasn’t going to change anytime soon. But at that point, it was as if all the resolve that Neville gathered over the years as a Gryffindor, finally started to materialize.

He'd always thought that he would do best in Hufflepuff. In that moment however, Neville finally understood why the hat placed him in his house.

He wasn't going to avenge his parents, no.

He will however bring their assailants to justice so that no one else - no child - would feel as helpless or lost as Neville did growing up.

"Alright there, Longbottom?" Moody's voice snaps him back into focus, and all of a sudden the bell has rung and students are gathering their things.

He swallows thickly then nods. "Just fine, Professor."

"Why don't you stay for tea?" Moody asks gruffly, the whizzing sound his magical eye makes sounds so much like the buzzing of a fly that Neville almost raised his hand to swat it."There's a book I have that I think might interest you."

"Of course, Professor Moody."

Neville learns a lot after the time he spent with the ex-auror. Plants, mostly.

But also of how tremendously brave his parents were as aurors, and Neville's felt more proud to be their child.

(At the end of the year when the rest of the school finds out that Barty Crouch Jr. polyjuiced himself into becoming Mad Eye, Neville clings to the hope that at least _some_ of the things the deranged Death Eater told him about his parents were true.)

 

_15_

They were early – him, Luna, and a few scattering of Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs.

Neville asked Luna if he could practice some of the spells with her. She’s not intimidating like Hermione can be when it comes to school. That is to say that while Neville appreciates the help Hermione’s given him over the years, there’s something about Luna that just makes him feel more at ease.

 _It’s probably her voice,_ Neville thinks to himself. Luna sounds so dreamy, so tranquil all the time, it has such a calming effect on him that he gets to focus more. She smiles at him encouragingly, and he ends up flicking his wand a little too hard.

“Nearly there, Neville. Just a lighter flick at the end. Much like a how a nargle flits by you.”

Merlin, Neville doesn’t understand her, but damn if her quirks don’t make him soft for her. It takes him a couple more tries before he gets the charm to work. When she cheers for him and he sees her eyes crinkle in joy, he blushes a little. She’s strange and baffles him most of the time, but she’s also kind – kinder than most have been to him.

They have some time left before DA starts so he leads them to the side to wait for Harry and the others. He didn’t think Luna would mind the pause he makes by the photo of the first Order they have tacked on the mirror. But she sees the way that his eyes dart to his parents’ faces and her wistful face softens.

“It’s strange, isn’t it? To not know one’s parents.” Her voice starts him from his musing, and Neville turns to face her with a conflicted look on his face. “You still have your dad though.” He whispers, eyes seemingly magnetized to the young faces waving at him in the photo. “And at least some semblance of a closure.” He doesn’t want to sound ungrateful that Nan took care of him all these years, or to discount the tragedy of losing her mother right in front of her. But Neville feels that no one really understands how much he feels like he’s stuck in a limbo. Because he’s not really an orphan, is he? And he doesn’t quite have parents either.

“I’m sorry Luna –“ Neville begins to apologize, knowing that she was just trying to empathize.

“That’s alright.” He doesn’t look at her, and he doesn’t really believe her. After all, how can the death of a loved one be alright? But she takes his hands in his and pats the back of his hand with her left one. “I imagine it must be difficult to grieve for something that’s still physically present.” And he’s so struck by how succinctly she’s captured what he’s failed to verbalize since finding out about his parents’ condition ten years prior.

“It’s exactly that,” he looks at her with a little bit more awe than what he started with and he doesn’t even think to be embarrassed about it. “I had nine great years with mum before she left, but sometimes I think my memories of her become fuzzy.” Luna’s pale eyes focus on a faraway point, her head cocked to the side in contemplation. “Or perhaps I’ve become the fuzzy one instead.” She wrinkles her nose as she gives him a slight smile, and Neville wished that he’d get to the same place of peace Luna has reached after her mother’s passing.

He subconsciously squeezes her hand that’s still in his. “Sometimes I wonder if they would’ve been proud of me growing up.” Her warm hand twitches in his, as if it has something very important it needed to convey to him. “Or at least if they would approve of this bit of rebellion.” And Neville really does wonder because for all that his parents were Gryffindors themselves, he can’t tell if they would’ve supported him or told him to fight in a different way.

“I believe they would’ve.” Luna says, her voice a gentle, tinkling sound of conviction.

“What makes you so sure?” Neville’s too mystified by the certainty in her voice. Because if he, as their child, can’t tell – how can this wisp of a girl invoke such a guarantee?

“Because you want to help the underdogs despite being one yourself.”

If Neville’s eyes seem to suddenly shine with tears, Luna doesn’t point it out.

 

_18_

Neville’s tired.

He’s so tired he feels he can sleep for a year.

It’s been a couple of weeks since the Battle has ended, but that wasn’t the only cause for the fatigue. The entire year, leading to the culmination of a castle turned battleground, was exhausting. Camping out in the Room of Requirement, taking in scared first years, avoiding the Carrows, getting tortured by them – just fighting every damn day for his life and the lives of the other students. It’s the most fatigued he’s been, but it’s also the most rewarding thing he’s done.

Neville imagines that had he sustained graver injuries, he’d be confined in St. Mungo’s instead of walking the halls to his parents’ ward. And perhaps for the first time since the war ended, it sinks in how appreciative he is that the war has ended.

He treads the familiar path that leads to his parents’ rooms, and pauses at the door before going in. He and Nan have visited them together, every year since he turned four, but it is only now that Neville deliberately pauses before joining them. There’s a little bit more gray in their hair now, he notices. Smile lines a bit more prominent than before. At a glance, his parents look completely unaffected by the horrors Voldemort created. Of course, anyone who’d recognize Frank and Alice Longbottom would know that to be false.

Alice’s face beams at him when he strides in. “Neville! You’ve come!”

(Perhaps one of the most difficult things that he’s had to experience is seeing his parents’ face lit up in recognition but not about being their son, but rather just seeing a familiar face.)

“Hi Alice, hey Frank.” He says cheerfully enough.

(He reconsiders his earlier thought. The most difficult thing is not being able to call them mum and dad.)

“You haven’t been to visit us in a while, is everything alright?” His father’s face looks so concerned that Neville can almost pretend that it’s a normal family conversation.

He deliberates telling them everything that’s happened in the past year, thinks they probably won’t retain much of what he’ll say if he does. But he sees their faces and thinks that they’ve experienced enough pain at the hands of Voldemort and his followers, he doesn’t need to add to it even if they won’t fully understand it.

“I’ve just been busy with my final year, that’s all.” Which isn’t exactly a lie, but a protection from the complete truth just the same.

Alice’s eyes warm up when she asks him what he’ll be doing now that school’s done. Neville relaxes, thinking this to be a safe topic to discuss. He tells them about probably doing some traveling first, visiting places known for magical plants, rare ones that not a lot have heard of or seen. He thinks to perhaps write a book on them, update the Herbology text Hogwarts has. It’s ambitious, and Neville doesn’t exactly have Hermione’s proficiency in research, but he thinks it maybe something he can delight in. Traveling, being out there – he’s never allowed himself to be selfish (how could he when Nan raised him better than that?). But he thinks that he deserves to enjoy the life that he could create for himself, be a young man, and not be held back by anything.

He wants to someday find a plant or an herb that could help his parents in anyway.

“Will you come visit us even when you’ve gone traveling?” Alice asks him – thrilled that he’ll have this adventure waiting for him, but also reluctant to see him go.

Neville smiles.

“Every chance I’ll get.”

 

_31_

This is not the first time Neville brings Luna with him to see his parents. But it is the first time they do so as a married couple.

Neville spent five and a half years traveling the magical communities around the world and the next four writing his textbook. It was difficult, and he’s wanted to quit more than a few hundred times a day, but holding his manuscript in his hands and having the editor compliment _his work_ , was worth every challenge and bouts of homesickness he got. It was in the celebration of his book being launched that Neville saw Luna again since leaving Britain.

Ten years.

They haven’t seen each other in ten years. But she leaves him gaping and blushing again like that fifteen year old boy learning how to cast a disarming spell.

“Hullo, Neville.” She says, all tinkling high voice and a warm smile to make Neville feel like he’s truly back home.

“H-hullo, Luna.” Well, he certainly stutters like that damn school boy again.

“Congratulations on your book. Nothing on what kind of plants the blibbering humdinger eat, I see.” He starts at her words, unsure how to proceed. But he sees the humor in her eyes and he releases a laugh with more air than actual sound. “Yeah, sorry. I didn’t see much of those in my travels.” Her responding laugh makes his smile in response, and if his chest puffs out a little, no one says anything.

They reconnected that night, and every night since – going on dates, hanging out with each other, and visiting his parents for three years until they’ve said their vows in front of their friends yesterday.

“Neville?” Luna’s dreamy voice pulls him out of his reverie.

“Hm?” He kisses her cheek in apology for not giving his full attention.

“Alice is asking where we’ll be going.” She smiles up at him. And if they weren’t in his parents’ room, Neville would love nothing more than to wrap his wife up in his arms and kiss her. But they are, and so decorum.

“Oh, we were thinking somewhere in the tropics. Maybe in Southeast Asia.” He’s excited about this trip. It’s not about discovering plants anymore. But just spending time with his new wife (and maybe convincing her on getting a head start on their family).

“I heard the magical communities in Asia are more diverse! Most of them don’t even need wands!” The excitement in Luna’s voice is infectious that Neville couldn’t help but squeeze her hand. “Do you think they’d be willing to teach us the dance in their rituals, Neville?” He kisses her nose lightly, unable to keep himself from touching her, before he replies. “I’m sure they will if you ask, love.”

Luna continues to chat animatedly with his parents. He’s always been so amazed with her ability to draw them out and into her warmth. Nan didn’t always approve of Luna, but in how she interacted with them, Augusta had no complaints.

Neville watches them from the side, smiles at the complete joy and peace evident in Frank and Alice’s faces. He never thought that the day would come when he too would come to a knowledge of that peace. At the end of the day, he still considers himself lucky that he still has these two to call parents.

When he and Luna move to leave so that they can start preparing for their trip, a hand on his arm stills him. Neville turns to find his mum’s smiling face staring up at him.

“Something wrong, Alice?” He asks, her name no longer a foreign thing on his tongue.

“You and Luna will come to visit us, won’t you?”

All of a sudden he’s thrown back to that moment thirteen years ago when he tells them of his plans to travel.

“Of course. You know we love spending time with you and Frank.” Neville responds, earnestly, truthfully.

Neville startles when his mum’s slight frame wraps him in a tight embrace, and he slowly brings his arms up in response. “You’re such a sweet boy, Neville.” Alice says in his ears. “I’m so proud of you.”

He stiffens when he hears those words, and wonders if they finally identify him as their son. But when he pulls back and sees her beaming at him sans the light of recognition in her eyes, Neville clears his throat and gives a trembling smile.

“It’s nothing. You just remind me of my parents, that’s all.”

And if Neville can give them that, give them love, without asking for something in return – then he knows he’s done the best he could as their son.

It’s been such a long journey for him to get to this place, but after thirty-one years, he feels like the boy who wondered why his parents were in the hospital is finally at peace.

**Author's Note:**

> Feedback would be much welcomed! I'm also in tumblr as chininja. :)


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